Tag: Mamoru Hosoda

August 6, 2023 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. There’s a moment in Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle (2021), early in the film, where his heroine is standing on a giant floating whale loaded with huge speakers, belting out a song as she drifts through a future city. It looks suitably iconic, and I was sure that it was a reference to Macross: […]

January 13, 2023 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. When you get a coffee-table art book in English on anime, it’s almost always about Miyazaki or Ghibli. So it’s great to report that The Man Who Leapt Through Film: The Art of Mamoru Hosoda, published by Abrams, is a really lovely coffee-table book. It’s big – 274 pages, 25 by 30 […]

February 6, 2022 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. In 2019, the architect Eric Wong was invited to make a world; the cyber-world of U in Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle. For Wong, that led to months considering twilight skies, linear spaces, and how to arrange sound speakers on the back of a flying whale. He discussed these questions with Hosoda online, but […]

February 3, 2022 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Nearly thirty years ago, Disney’s animated film Beauty and the Beast opened in Japan. That was back before Disney cartoons had simultaneous releases round the world; Beauty opened in Japan in September 1992, a year after its American debut, though a couple of weeks before it opened in Britain. Among the people […]

October 6, 2021 · 5 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Mamoru Hosoda’s latest film mines contemporary issues for its storyline, touching on social anxiety, online identity, cancel culture and the fragility of Internet fame. Its leading lady is Suzu, a shy teenager who finds a new outlet for her desires and ambitions by signing up to the virtual reality service “U”, an […]